


wristbands

by Love_Me_Dead



Category: One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Cutting, Depression, Getting Back Together, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Suicide Attempt, Tears, anyway, geddit, like nick and louis, yeah - Freeform, yeah uhhhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-22
Updated: 2013-11-22
Packaged: 2018-01-02 07:59:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1054374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Love_Me_Dead/pseuds/Love_Me_Dead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>But honestly, Nick is worried sick. Louis’s been gone since five in the afternoon, leaving minutes after Nick got back from running to the store. Louis is twenty-one, for God’s sake, he can take care of himself, but that doesn’t stop Nick from worrying, worrying, worrying. He can’t help worrying through each dying cigarette that Louis has found someone better.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>or the one where Nick smokes too much and Louis hates himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wristbands

**Author's Note:**

> much thanks to Tiana, my lovely beta and to Bekha for creating the post that inspired this work. 
> 
> also, this is obviously potentially triggering so proceed with caution if anything like cutting, suicide attempts and depression could trigger you. other than that, enjoy~

Nick is all alone and his only company is the dark and a cigarette and his thoughts. Well, it’s not completely dark because the cherry glow on the end of his cigarette illuminates his face while the streetlight flickers, causing an orange strobe effect when it gets particularly bad. When it’s good, it filters through the open window and makes elongated shadows over the patterned tile which is frigid against his bare toes. When it’s halfway decent, he can actually make out most of the kitchen. But for the most part, the room is dark and emphasizing of his loneliness, stringing up a thousand lights and signs in his brain that remind him that _you are alone_.

 

His only company is the distant noise of traffic coming in on the icy breeze and the smoke from his cigarette curling around and the refrigerator humming him a tune. Normally, he’d be playing music, singing along to it in his horribly off-key voice, and filling the too-long pause between his last words and last noise-causing business with something other than the deafening silence. He can’t, though. He can’t risk missing the thump of footsteps in the hall and a key sliding into the lock and the lock clicking as it turns. He cannot miss it.

 

It’s half midnight and he’s already smoked his way through half a pack. His ashtray his clogged and the November air has reached its fingers into the flat and bled its cold down Nick’s spine and into his chest. He remembers listening to his year eight teacher blathering on about the kinetic molecular theory, talking about how the only reason things got cold was because they were giving off their heat to other things, to the air around them. Cold couldn’t act as heat could, Mr. Woods had said. Cold could not try to make things around them colder and the warm things were growing cold because they were trying to give their heat to the cold in vain. Nick thinks it’s utter bullshit. Nothing in his flat was warm anyway; it had no heat to drain away in the first place.

 

He stubs out the cigarette in the ashtray, the smoke still trailing into the air. He exhales and watches the whisp curl out into the night, watches the breeze catch it and take it somewhere else. Reaching again for the cigarette pack, he stops himself. The entire flat stinks of cigarettes and Louis will hate it whenever he gets home, hate that Nick worried himself into smoking half a pack and he’ll hate it all. He’ll tell Nick that story again about his uncle who got lung cancer from smoking too much and they’ll fight about it because really, what don’t they fight about?

 

But honestly, Nick is worried sick. Louis’s been gone since five in the afternoon, leaving minutes after Nick got back from running to the store. Louis is twenty-one, for God’s sake, he can take care of himself, but that doesn’t stop Nick from worrying, worrying, worrying. Louis is always so eager to please that he’ll do just about anything for anyone. He’s careful, he knows how to not get hurt, but Nick is fretting about someone getting through that first layer of armor and taking advantage of Louis or hurting him or something else that would make his blood boil. He also can’t help worrying through each dying cigarette that Louis has found someone better.

 

Someone better who can be around more often. Nick got a new job recently and he works from five in the morning up until one in the afternoon. Louis’s class schedule is noon until seven because he’s stuffing as many courses he can into the afternoon since he’s definitely not a morning person. By the time he gets home, Nick is showered and ready for bed and they don’t get much more than pleasantries in. Pathetic pleasantries at that.

 

It’s been five days since Nick heard Louis tell him he loved him and it’s been five days since he’s said it. He’s just begun worrying a lot more than he really should and it cost him half a pack of cigarettes in less than a day.

 

Nick’s hand is reaching once again for the pack of cigarettes, his resolve to make Louis happy crumbling under the weight of how stressed he is, when he hears it. A thump outside the door- his heart jumps. Jingling of keys and a giggle- he sets himself up for something bad. The key sliding into the lock and the lock clicking as it opens- he’s giddy and he’s forgotten all about the cigarettes.

 

The door opens, spilling light into the flat and Nick blinks against it. The streetlight had failed seconds before and it was all black, just the miniscule little green glow from the numbers on the stove. Louis stumbles into the flat and Nick hurries to close the window, so, so happy to see Louis and not even noticing that he’s drunk. He just wants to make the flat warmer and he’ll turn on the radiator after he’s given Louis a kiss and said hi and everything. Here’s his Louis and he hasn’t had a proper cuddle in a week and Louis is so cuddly and clingy, especially when it’s cold.

 

“Fuck it stinks,” is the first thing out of Louis’s mouth, words slurred together. No greeting, no pathetic pleasantry. An observation, a complaint.

 

Nick’s heart sinks. Louis is drunk. “Hey, love,” he tries, his voice coming out an octave higher than he means it to.

 

Louis is hopping out of his shoes and fumbling to hang up his coat and he turns, looking at Nick and his face doesn’t light up the way it normally does. Nick’s anxiety triples. “How much’d you smoke?”

 

“Uh, just a few. I got bored and I’m stressed. Sorry, I’ll grab the Febreze.”

 

“Oh, great, ocean nicotine.”

 

Nick is used to Louis’s sarcasm, he’s used to sarcasm. But this time it’s different. It’s a toss of shade thrown at Nick and it stings like a paper cut. The flat feels colder and he crosses into the living room, turning on the radiator.

 

“How was your night?” Nick asks, resorting back to the pathetic pleasantries.

 

“S’okay,” Louis slurs, tossing down his keys. “’M gunna shower.”

 

Nick takes a breath and nods, watching Louis walk into the hall and towards the bathroom. “Wait, can.. can we cuddle? Once you’re done your shower?”

 

“Not in the mood.”

 

There’s hardly even a pause between their words, just a smooth transition into Louis’s words and that hurts. It’s like he was expecting Nick to ask and he had already planned out a rejection. And added to that hurt is the lemon juice that Nick knows Louis is a cuddly drunk. When he’s drunk, he’ll cuddle up to anything and everything. At New Year’s just after they started dating, Nick found Louis curled up with Greg because he’d gotten smashed and wanted some sort of human contact.

 

Nick curls up in bed, burrowing under the duvet and feigning sleep when Louis gets out of the shower. Louis lies on the other side, taking his portion of the duvet and sleeping as far away from Nick as he can. That’s the last night.

 

 

The morning is Sunday and Nick wakes up feeling like his blood is poison. Louis’s side of the bed is already empty and there’s another rush of poison through Nick’s body and if there were anything in his stomach he’s sure that it would no longer be in his stomach. He gets up anyway, and he showers, which lessens the burning and acidity of the poison inside him. Once he’s dressed, he heads out into the living room of the flat and sees Louis is tucked into the arm of the couch, a blanket over his jogger-clad legs and his short fingers curled around a mug of tea. He looks so cute, so cuddly and so warm and Nick immediately wants to cuddle up with him.

 

The poison hits again when he remembers Louis from last night.

 

“How was last night?” Nick asks, hardly trying to sound interested but it seems Louis is too hungover to notice.

 

“Hmm?” Louis asks, looking up from the telly. “Oh, it was good. Loads of fun.”

 

Nick nods. “So, why’d you go out?” He asks before any sort of brain-to-mouth filter can stop them. They have an unspoken agreement not to ask why questions. Why questions are too hard to answer and it’s simply better not to ask why. Louis is a creature of impulse, he sometimes doesn’t even have a why.

 

“Uh, Harry invited me for a night with the guys and w-we had a few beers and yeah,” Louis’s voice has gone softer and he’s no longer looking at Nick. Though he fancies himself an actor, Louis is utter rubbish at lying around someone he loves.

 

“Yeah? Even when you were texting me telling me that you can’t wait for Saturday? When you were looking forward to this weekend being about us?” His voice is echoing the poison in his heart.

 

“Well it’s not like I’ve seen Harry that much either!” Louis defends, desperately grasping onto his lie.

 

“Oh fuck off, you had class with him on Wednesday and Friday. What were you doing? Why are you lying to me?”

 

Louis no longer looks cuddly and warm and happy but rather annoyed and pissed off. “I’m not lying to you.”

 

“Then look at me.”

 

Louis glares up at Nick, his blue eyes icy and cold. Nick isn’t used to that. He’s used to seeing them warm with fondness and sometimes all wild from stress and quite often, drooping with disappointment in something. The hard, hard look in his eyes makes Nick’s chest collapse a little, makes his stance a little shorter.

 

“I was at Harry’s,” Louis says, his eyes locked on Nick’s. Neither of them can look away, playing some game of eye-contact chicken. “And we had a few drinks.”

 

“Did you cheat on me with him?” Nick can’t help but be suspicious of Harry and Louis. Best friends since they were ten, they’ve always straddled the line between friends and more than friends, causing Nick to worry that Louis would lose faith in his relationship with Nick and fall back onto Harry.

 

“Fuck no.”

 

Nick sighs, only having one last question, a why question that he’s hesitant to ask. “Why didn’t you cuddle last night?” He hates how pathetic the question is and he hates how pathetic he feels for asking it but he has to know why he didn’t cuddle up with him and opened a hole in his heart.

 

Louis stills at that, his entire body tensing and Nick feels sick with worry at his answer. He wants a smoke and he knows he left the pack on the kitchen table (and he knows it probably won’t be there and once this argument is done he’ll probably bitch about it, causing a new fight and then he’ll go to the corner store and buy more).

 

“I didn’t want to do it this way,” Louis says softly, all anger, all annoyance and frustration gone from his voice and replaced with a tone of guilt that makes Nick’s entire throat constrict and he wants a smoke, needs a smoke.

 

“What do you mean?” He manages through the tiny opening in his larynx.

 

“I mean that I went over to Harry’s for advice. It wasn’t a guy’s night and I wanted some advice because I don’t know how to do this anymore.”

 

Nick stays silent, the words reverberating through him in an absolutely nauseating way.

 

“I know you’ve wanted to be a DJ your whole life, Nick, I do, and I want you to be a DJ and achieve your dreams and do everything you want. But like, I still have a few years left of school and you’re just gunna get busier and busier with your work and so I don’t know how we’re gunna work,” Louis’s voice doesn’t catch on the words but Nick’s breath hitches a little. “I love you Nick, I do, but this isn’t gunna work.”

 

Nick needs a smoke. He needs a smoke more than anything and he doesn’t know what to say at all and he just wants to smoke until his lungs bloat and burst and fill with tar. “N-no, Lou, we can make it work, I promise we can make it work.”

 

“Nick, no. I haven’t seen you like, at all this week.”

 

“You could’ve last night, last night we could have fixed it.”

 

Louis sighs, obviously feeling some sort of pity for Nick and it mixes his burning feeling of loss with fierce anger. “Nick, my parents divorced because they never saw each other. I want to end it now before I convince myself it’ll work and then it doesn’t.”

 

“We don’t have fucking kids!” Nick shouts like it’ll change something.

 

“Obviously not,” Louis says tersely, bordering on a hiss. “But I don’t want to drag this out.”

 

Nick has no argument to that. He doesn’t want to drag it out either; it’s already gone on for too long. His heart is thudding _don’t go don’t go don’t go_ and sending blood vessels that’s only mission is to scream _don’t leave me don’t leave me don’t leave me_ in hopes that it lets off some pheromone that Louis will heed. He needs a smoke but he needs Louis more and he wants to prove that they can work, they can actually do this and everything will be okay and there’s no need to prematurely break what isn’t broken.

 

“Lou,” he whispers, and his voice is once again pathetic. “Please. Don’t.”

 

Louis shakes his head and finally there’s this little bit of pain on his face. He stands, abandoning his tea on the coffee table beside him and looking up at Nick. “I’ll be at Harry’s.”

 

Harry’s. That means that Nick will see him every time he hangs out with Harry and Louis won’t be gone from his life. He nods, watching as Louis walks past him, carefully angling his shoulders so they don’t collide with Nick’s as he walks away.

 

 

It takes three days for Louis to pack up all the shit he piled into the flat and leave. He sleeps at Harry’s, eats at Harry’s, showers at Harry’s and the bathroom doesn’t smell like Louis’s favourite shampoo or his deodorant and there’s no shaving cream-covered razor to greet Nick when he gets back from work. There’s no constant smell of steeping tea and there’s no more quiet periods in which Louis tries to study. There’s no more bitching whenever Nick lights up a cigarette and forgets to open a window and there’s no one talking at him. The flat is silent.

 

Nick doesn’t really do much of anything. He does what he needs to survive and that’s it. He wakes up, eats breakfast and goes to work. On his way to work, he smokes when he can and he smokes during his break at work and he doesn’t eat lunch at work anymore. He smokes on his way home and he grabs something out of the freezer or orders his fifth night in a row of takeout.

 

His job is great and his coworkers are amazing but all of the happiness he builds up at work crumbles back into crunchy, hard sadness when he walks in the door of his flat to find that Louis forgot a sock near their shoe mat. Things like that happen for a little while. He finds one of Louis’s mugs, his favourite pillowcase, his biology binder from last year with all the scrawled notes and the questionable stains over the front of it. Each thing he puts in a pile for Harry when he comes over – if he comes over. Nick isn’t sure where their relationship stands now that his friend’s best friend has broken his heart.

 

After a month, it’s all gone. Louis’s old bag of cotton balls, his favourite brand of condoms, that stupid glow stick from that stupid concert of that generic pop band they went to over the summer. It’s all been binned and now it’s probably in a landfill somewhere and Nick would keep it if he were more sentimental. He’d keep it and he’d take it over to Louis himself but currently the mention of his name is enough to make Nick hurt and whimper for a smoke.

 

After a month and nine days, Nick sees Louis for the first time since their breakup. Harry invites him over, promising that Louis is out with Liam and Zayn and Niall and they’re all playing Fifa or something like that. Harry is so open and so genuinely concerned with Nick’s wellbeing that Nick has no choice but to say yes. He’s said no to so many people when they’ve offered to go out for a few drinks, telling them that thanks, but he wakes up at five every morning and he doesn’t have the energy nor the time to get drunk with them. (Though there are occasions in which he gets so drunk he can barely walk. During these times, he separates himself from his phone in worry that he’d text Louis something stupid and pathetic.)

 

Nick walked to Harry’s flat – Harry and Louis’s flat, because it was close and he could use the excuse to have a cigarette. On his way over, he feels good, a little hopeful since he hasn’t really properly spoken to anyone since the breakup and maybe talking to Harry - who’s quite the listener for being twenty-one - will understand and help ease the pain. That was Nick’s favourite thing about Harry: his genuine concern for another person’s feelings and his willingness to listen. For some twenty-one year old shithead, he’s really the sweetest little thing. (Louis was always sweeter.)

 

When he climbed up three flights of stairs to reach Harry’s floor, he’s a little winded from the steps and a little embarrassed that he’s worked up a sweat walking up stairs. His defence is that he overdressed for the above-average weather today but it was still cold and the sudden heat warmed him with his movement. He raises a hand and knocks on the door, taking deep breaths to calm his erratic inhales and exhales.

 

Harry pulls open the door with a wide grin and it softens when he remembers what Nick is going through. He reaches over and wraps his arms around him in a hug, squeezing gently, giving Nick no choice but to hug him right back and squeeze gently. The younger boy pulls him in, apologizes for the mess and remembers how many protests he’d gotten from Louis when he asked him to move in with him.

 

(“But Nick, I’m messy and then you’ll want to break up with me!” Louis whined, pouting at him.

 

Nick smiled at him. “Darling, nothing in this world would make me want to break up with you. Not even a little mess.”

 

Louis’s pout stayed fast on his face.

 

“C’mon, sunshine, you’ve seen my flat. Together we’ll be great.”)

 

Nick is lead into the kitchen, sat down at the kitchen table and ordered to stay there until Harry decides they can migrate to the living room. For now, they are therapist and client with their mugs of too-sweet tea.

 

“You reek,” Harry says bluntly, a good thing for him. Usually he tiptoes around his thesis, trying to say it in the politest way possible.

 

Nick lets out a _‘tsch’_ at that. Of course he does.

 

“Considered quitting smoking?”

 

“Harry, I appreciate the concern but I’ve heard it enough. Can we get back on track of.. whatever the fuck this is really supposed to be?”

 

Harry nods, giving Nick a bit of a look. “Well, how are you after the breakup? How is it living alone?”

 

Nick shakes his head, not wanting to find the words to describe the loneliness and the yearning for Louis to come back. Whoever had invented English had not anticipated pain such as this and there were no words that could do the feeling actual justice.

 

“Pretty shit then?”

 

“Yeah,” Nick mumbles, looking into his tea. “I mean, every morning I still kind of expect him to be there and I’m always really shocked when he isn’t. You know? And whenever I make tea, I have to remind myself that I have to only make one and that making two would be stupid and useless and I would hate myself for it. And then there’s the lack of mess. I mean, I never really enjoyed being messy but Louis made it into some sort of cool game or something. We’d kind of like, see who could make more mess before the other broke and cleaned it up. For the first time since he moved in, my flat is _clean_ and I hate it.”

 

Harry can only nod. Nick knows that he’s never been through a breakup this bad, that he’s only ever been in two relationships that all ended on good terms, that didn’t leave one member writhing. “It’ll get easier,” Harry offers as consolation and Nick wants to vomit at the very thought of those words.

 

“How’s Louis doing?” He hates himself for wondering it because he knows Louis will probably be fine. He’ll be fine with everything and the mention of Nick’s name won’t make him keel over and sob.

 

“He’s okay,” Harry answers. “I mean, it’s obviously hard on him too but he’s coping.”

 

Coping soothes Nick. Coping means that Louis hurts too and that he isn’t starting to fuck other people.

 

“You two were together a long time… And you broke up after a week of things getting rough,” Harry points out as though Nick didn’t notice.

 

“Guess he’d been thinking about it for a while,” Nick mumbles. The thought makes him want to scream. How many times had Louis told him he loved him, cuddled up with him, while the thought of breaking up with him circled in his mind?

 

“Nick, he spoke to me about everything. I know everything he thought and he only started thinking it the Tuesday before you broke up.”

 

“Why’d he do it?”

 

“He didn’t want to hold you back, he said. He wanted you to go places where you could never be able to go with him and he wanted you to have your dreams.”

 

“That’s bullshit,” Nick mumbles again, rising from the kitchen chair. “I’m going for a smoke.”

 

Usually Harry stops him, tells him that he’s gunna die before he’s forty and dissuades him from smoking but this time he’s silent. He knows that Nick needs this and he knows that his mood will only go down even more until he’s pissed and bitching at everything. Nick goes out onto Harry’s balcony, out through his shitty curtains and the sliding glass door. He avoids Harry’s bike and leans against the railing, lighting up a cigarette and taking a long drag from it. He can almost feel the nicotine start to take effect about halfway through, can feel the way his nerves are calming and he’s slowly blocking the thoughts of Louis and how his lips feel.

 

He’s careful with his ash and he makes sure that there’s no unfortunate passerby walking near the building when he flicks off his butt since Harry doesn’t keep an ashtray. He has no reason to since Nick isn’t over quite enough to warrant keeping one and he only smokes on occasion at parties when someone offers him one of theirs. Nick exhales the last lungful of smoke after disposing of the fag, waiting a few minutes so the odour of the nicotine has time to drift away from him and he doesn’t stink up the entire flat. He’d hate for Louis to return to a flat that smells like cigarettes.

 

When he goes back into the flat, he calls to Harry that he’s using the bathroom but really, he isn’t. He wants to see what the guest room, now Louis’s room, looks like. It used to be a plain room with plain white sheets that were only changed to fit the season. A big puffy duvet was used in the winter and a thinner, very light blue cover was used in the summer. He wonders if Louis bought new sheets and if his room is as messy as it was back at their flat. He wonders if he keeps that photo of his family on the bedside table right behind his phone and a bottle of water in case he got thirsty in the night. He wonders if his new pillow smells like him yet.

 

Nick creeps down the hall and he checks to make sure Harry isn’t looking before he pushes the door open gently. His gentleness turns out to be good since the first thing his eyes land on in the middle of the room is Louis, tucked and curled into the fluffy white duvet, asleep. His breath catches in his throat at the sight and he wants to lie down behind him and wrap his arms around his waist and pull him close and kiss his neck like he loves to do. It stabs and stings when he remembers he can’t.

 

He’s about to close the door when he notices there are sticky notes on the wall, and that’s not particularly unusual since he knows that Louis likes sticky notes and using them to remind himself to do his English homework or to buy milk in the morning. What’s unusual and what’s eye catching about them are the words written on them. Nick steps closer to examine, careful not to step on anything lest he break it or make enough noise that he could wake Louis.

 

“stupid”

 

“fat”

 

“not good enough”

 

“fuck up”

 

Nick never wants to see that and he wishes he could go back in time and protect himself from reading something like that in Louis’s scrawl. The notes are concentrated places where Louis will look and they all say things like that, things that Louis thinks are faults. Nick immediately wants to wake Louis and question him, wants to grab a pen and cross out all the words on the notes and write about how beautiful and perfect Louis is. He wants to cry, most of all.

 

Louis stirs on the bed and Nick freezes where he is. He’d have to be loud to escape before Louis’s eyes open and he sees Nick. When his eyes do open, they’re confused and glossed over with sleep and when they fall on Nick they don’t light up like they normally would on the mornings they woke up together. He rubs his eyes and Nick runs through thoughts on how to cover this up, how to play it off as though he didn’t want to peek into how Louis was really doing after their breakup.

 

“S-sorry, I – Harry asked me to look around for any dishes and I thought you were out,” Nick says. It’s the only words he’s spoken to him since the last “please, Lou” the day he finished moving his things out.

 

“Oh, yeah, I had a fuckload of homework last night and, uh, stayed up really late to finish it,” Louis says quietly, his voice rough from sleep. “I cleaned up last night, so there’s nothing in here.”

 

Nick nods. “Yeah, thanks. Good luck with your homework and I’m sorry I interrupted your nap.”

 

Louis sits up, running a hand through his messy and flat hair. “Nah, I should wake up anyway.”

 

“Right, yeah,” he says. He’s about to retreat and he really wants to ask about the sticky notes on the wall. He shouldn’t but he wants to. He wants to make sure Louis is okay because even though Nick wants him to be hurt by the breakup, he doesn’t want him to be so hurt that he does something stupid.

 

“You okay?” Louis asks.

 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, sorry. Are you?”

 

Louis shrugs, stretching his arms above his head with his hands tucked into the sleeves of his sweater. “Could be better.”

 

Nick nods. “I’ll let you to it,” he says before retreating out of the room and shutting the door.

 

His trip back down the hall is taken on shaky legs and he collapses onto the sofa next to Harry, unsure of how to put into words what he saw. Should he tell Harry about the notes on the wall or does Harry already know? He doesn’t want to betray Louis’s trust, doesn’t want to ruin any chance he has of getting back with Louis over something as stupid as worrying over him. He wants to excuse himself for another trip to the balcony for another smoke but he knows that Harry would follow him and question him until it bordered on interrogation.

 

Instead, he takes his tea back from Harry and he leans into the arm of the sofa, shutting his eyes. The telly is on, playing some music video channel where the hostess keeps going on about celebrity gossip and Nick is exposed to enough of that already. But when that video from The 1975 comes on, he can’t help but be put a little bit at ease. He likes The 1975 and currently their song is taking his mind off of everything.

 

“You okay?” Harry asks, leaning into his side.

 

“Yeah,” Nick answers, voice soft. He knows he’s probably pale and he’s probably sweating a little bit and he probably looks like he’s coming down with the flu. “Uh, have-have you seen Louis’s room recently?”

 

Harry’s face screws up in confusion, his brows lowering and his lips pouting out a little bit. “Uh, no? Have you?”

 

Nick is hesitant to nod but he does and he kind of hates that he looked into Louis’s room. He’s such a creep.

 

“Why are you asking me if I’ve been in it?”

 

“I… I just saw some stuff that I think you might wanna talk to him about.. It’s not like, super serious but yeah, you might wanna just take a look and talk to him.”

 

Harry’s frown deepens. “Nick, what’d you see?”

 

(Mostly Nick is grateful that Harry isn’t asking about why he went in.) “Just see for yourself. I don’t want to explain it.”

 

“I’m guessing you also saw Louis?” Harry says with a small sigh.

 

Nick nods, taking another sip of his now lukewarm tea. “Is he okay?”

 

“Yeah, he just had a late night last night and I wanted to see you but I didn’t want to choke on the smell of your flat if you stink this bad of fags.”

 

Nick shoots him a playful glare and Harry laughs.

 

“But yeah, he’s fine.”

 

A few minutes later, Louis pads out from his bedroom and goes to the kitchen. Nick goes silent, not that there was much conversation between them anyway, and very pointedly does not look at Louis in all his cuddly and tired splendor. He walks past them and Harry gets up, going into the kitchen to speak in whispers with Louis for a little while. The programme they were watching ends and Nick is done his tea anyway so he gets up and walks carefully towards the kitchen. He doesn’t want to eavesdrop and he doesn’t want to interrupt them so he just listens to see if their conversation is something he wouldn’t feel bad interrupting, something like “you need to shave”.

 

“You need to eat something, Lou,” Harry was saying to him in a hushed and stern tone.

 

“I’m fine,” Louis says, sounding tired.

 

“C’mon, have a muffin with your tea or something. You need to get your strength back up after last night.”

 

“I don’t feel like eating. I just want tea.”

 

“Have a biscuit.”

 

Louis sighs and probably begrudgingly takes a biscuit (probably one Harry baked) because there’s silence. Harry praises Louis gently and Nick takes this opportunity to walk in, trying to forget about Harry’s mention of ‘last night’. He sets his mug down in the sink, giving everyone in the room a smile. Louis is leaned against the counter, eating a shortbread biscuit as he waits for the kettle to boil and he’s not looking at Nick; instead his eyes are downcast onto the cupboard under the sink, studying the pattern of the wooden door. He looks small and sad, like the time two years ago when he and Liam got in a fight, and Nick just wants to wrap him up in his arms and kiss him all over his pretty face.

 

“Thanks for the tea and the advice, Harry,” Nick says softly, not wanting to break the atmosphere in the room.

 

“Yeah, no problem. You don’t have to go,” Harry is giving him a slightly pouty look. Nick hates him.

 

“Nah, I should get home.”

 

Harry nods and he hugs Nick tight, his strong arms trapping Nick’s own under them. He’s warm and he’s cuddly but he isn’t what Nick wants to be holding and that reminder makes him sigh a little as he hugs Harry back. He wants to be holding Louis in his arms and kissing his hair and reminding him that it’s okay to be sad, that he doesn’t need to beat himself up over it. He wants to rub his back, make him tea and wipe his tears away and let him cry.

 

Earlier, Nick thinks that he might’ve been glad to see Louis looking so broken. Now that he’s watching Louis look small and defeated, he isn’t glad at all. He just wants him to smile and even if Louis were already packing up his things to move in with some new boyfriend, it would be better than watching him look so sad. It would be better than fighting the urge to reach over and hug him as he’s turning to leave. It would be so much better than wondering if Louis was okay and debating for the hundredth time whether he should strike up a conversation via text and ask.

 

Nick walks back home, burning through another cigarette.

 

 

The next time he sees Louis is eleven days after the first. Nick wakes up that morning with absolutely no intention of getting out of bed seeing as it’s his Friday off work and he can spend his day doing fuck all if he likes. He rolls around for a while, bringing the pillow that Louis used to sleep with to his chest and burying his face in the smooth case, breathing in the scent. It all smelled like cigarette smoke and Nick now. It didn’t smell like tea or like Louis’s shampoo and cologne anymore. Nick can still remember the scent clearly and he can remember it hitting him like a wall when he walked into Louis’s room.

 

Nick wonders how long he’ll survive like this. He wonders idly if the world will stop being this white-washed piece of shit that it is. He wonders if he’ll stop feeling so utterly broken.

 

He knows that their relationship wasn’t perfect and that they fought all the time over everything. They had their first official fight two weeks after they got together. They bickered the day they got together. But they also had sex two weeks after they got together and they kissed the day they got together. Nick remembers it well; Louis giggled when they kissed and Nick reveled in how soft his lips were and how he still tasted of that Frappuccino he’d had earlier even though it had been two hours since he finished it.

 

Nick wants it all back. He doesn’t want to live like this anymore. He doesn’t want to be so lonely anymore and he wants someone to yell at him whenever he smokes. He wants someone to wake up with in the morning and be able to pull closer and kiss to wake them. He wants Louis back and he wants Louis’s sleepy smile beaming back at him in the morning. He wants Louis.

 

Eventually, Nick gets over his soppy yearning for Louis to come back and he gets up and into the shower. Once he’s shaved and made himself look presentable, he goes out to the store. He’s out of paper towels and coffee and he’ll probably stop by Starbucks for a coffee since he hasn’t had any in a few days and he doesn’t want to wait until he gets home. He may also start Christmas shopping since that’s right around the corner and he has more money than he anticipated. Maybe because he hadn’t anticipated he would only be spending it on himself.

 

He drives to the strip mall, too lazy to walk the distance from his flat and he doesn’t want to bundle up so much that he has to strip off a few layers once he gets going. He parks in front of Starbucks, telling himself that the walk from Starbucks to Tesco and back will be sufficient to work off the calories from his drink. He runs a hand through his hair and gets out of his car.

 

The door jingles when it opens and Nick looks around to assess what the line is like. Since it’s got quite a few people, he looks around the small shop as he takes his place behind a young uniformed woman. His eyes fall on Louis in the corner, away from everyone else and tapping away on his phone while he sips Frappuccino through a straw and Nick is immediately endeared for his love of the drinks even when the temperature begins falling. He makes a mental note to go and say hi, figuring that since Louis seems more interested in his phone than his drink he’ll stick around if he finishes it before Nick can get his own.

 

He orders a caramel Macchiato and while he’s waiting in a small group of other people blocking the stand of thermoses and bags of Starbucks brand coffee, he slides over to the table to say hi to Louis. He sits in the chair across from him, making him look up from his phone and he smiles a little, taking another sip of his drink so he doesn’t have to be the first to speak.

 

“Hey,” Nick greets and it dawns on him how shitty an idea this was. Nick and Louis were hardly ever friends. They knew each other for a month before they began dating and in that month, they exchanged all of twelve sentences. Now that they’ve broken up, Nick shouldn’t view Louis as the kind of person he can go and strike up a conversation with in Starbucks. Louis is that person that he’ll smile at if they make eye contact and maybe say hi as he passes him.

 

“Hi,” Louis says softly when he’s swallowed.

 

“I can’t believe you’re drinking a Frappuccino in four degree weather,” Nick chuckles, listening as the barista called out a peppermint latte for Caroline.

 

“I can’t believe you still judge me about that,” Louis says, a small smile twisting at his lips. He looks tired and pale and a little sad. Nick hates it.

 

He forces another small laugh, looking down at the table. Louis’s arms are folded over it and he’s wearing a sweater that Nick got him two years ago. Something on his wrist catches Nick’s eye and he inspects a little further, squinting to make out the thing around Louis’s wrist. It’s a hospital bracelet, fastened and secured around his wrist and when Louis raises that hand to take another sip of his drink, it falls down his arm a little to reveal the edge of a bandage.

 

“When were you in the hospital?” Nick asks, genuine concern in his voice. He still wasn’t quite used to not knowing what Louis was doing a lot of the time and he wonders how he got himself into the hospital if there are no visible things like crutches laid on the wall beside him or stitches on his forehead.

 

“Uh, two nights ago,” Louis sighs, looking away.

 

“What happened? Are you okay?”

 

Louis shrugs.

 

“Lou, are you okay?” Nick asks. He’s going to ask Harry next if Louis is still unwilling to divulge.

 

Louis sighs again, shaking his head and refusing to make eye contact with Nick.

 

“What’s wrong?” Is the first thing out of Nick’s mouth, out of pure instinct. He isn’t used to not being with Louis.

 

“It’s nothing, Nick, leave it alone,” Louis replies, his words soft and small.

 

Nick realizes then that he was being a little invasive. They’re broken up, after all, he shouldn’t even be speaking to him. “Sorry,” he says.

 

There’s silence between them while Louis nods, still refusing to look at Nick. Alex is called to retrieve their hot chocolate and caramel mocha.

 

“Can we be friends?” Nick asks quietly and he wishes he was less pathetic.

 

Louis looks up at him, then, and his blue eyes aren’t icy and hard or really anything at all. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.”

 

Nick offers a small smile. “Text me later, yeah? I miss your silly texts.” Louis used to send the stupidest texts out of anyone in Nick’s contacts, which was quite a feat considering Harry Styles was among those in his contacts.

 

“Yeah, sure,” Louis nods, giving him a smile. “I miss you.”

 

The words hit Nick and he didn’t think that Louis missed him at all. He can’t help that his smile tightens a little as he tries to hold back how much that means to him. “Yeah? Me too.”

 

“You miss yourself?” Louis teases, not even missing a beat.

 

Nick laughs. “No, you cheeky fuck. I miss you too.”

 

Louis grins at him, his eyes dancing a little when Nick responds as he always does to Louis’s jokes and teasing. “I’ll text you later, yeah.”

 

Nick doesn’t want to get up when the barista calls out his name in her fading northern accent. He wants to grab it and sit with Louis and catch up but by the time he’s wrestled a lid onto it, Louis is already deep into whatever he was doing with his phone before. So Nick heads back out and finishes his errands, getting home with his required items and collapsing on the couch to watch shitty Christmas movies until he falls asleep.

 

He doesn’t end up falling asleep, which sucks because then he wouldn’t have to be conscious for the three hours it takes Louis to send him a text. When he does feel his phone vibrate, he scrambles for it and prepares himself for disappointment. It was probably Greg or Aimee or someone, not Louis. Louis probably had class now anyway and that was his break between classes. His university isn’t far from there and he could’ve walked. The text is from Louis, though, who’s still saved as ‘Sunshine <3 <3 <3’ in Nick’s phone (he wonders if he’s still ‘Nicholas <3’ or if that’s changed).

 

 _Hey_ was all Louis had sent.

 

 _Hi, how are you??_ Nick replies, hoping that his rapid reply isn’t misconstrued as desperation. Even though he is desperate.

 

 _I’m ok. You?_ Louis replies after a minute.

 

 _Pretty good. Why are you only okay?_ Nick doesn’t mean to be invasive again but he wants Louis to be able to tell people he’s doing great instead of just okay. Okay implied that he was surviving and not thriving.

 

_Just going through a rough patch. I’ll get better._

 

Nick doesn’t like that Louis is going through a rough patch and is currently sporting a bandaged wrist and a hospital bracelet. _If you need to talk, I’m always here. And Harry is actually really good at advice no matter what Greg says._

 

(He hopes Louis giggled at that.)

 

_Thanks. And yeah, he is._

 

They exchange a few more pointless messages before Louis bids Nick a goodnight. Nick worries as he does and he smokes away his worry, letting his concern have a tangible form and letting it stain the sofa and the ceiling and the walls of the house. He wonders if this flat will be rented out again if Nick ever moves out like he’s been contemplating. He wonders if the new tenant will mind the smell very much or if they’ll be thankful for it since they’re a smoker themselves.

 

Nick falls asleep on the sofa that night, drifting off to some Christmas film.

 

 

Things get less weird after that and Nick finds his world is a little more colourful now that he and Louis are friends. He can go to Harry’s while Louis is there and doesn’t find that he wants to sob whenever he sees him. He can hear him brought up in conversation and the only feeling that goes through him is a yearning to hold him and kiss him again. Nick thinks he may be slowly, slowly getting over him and he doesn’t know whether that scares him shitless or if it soothes him. He and Louis were together for nearly five years. His past five years have been wanting Louis and having him and now he just wants him again.

 

Louis was so bubbly when he first met Nick. He was spring-loaded and loud and sarcastic and funny as hell. Nick remembers that their conversations before they were together weren’t as awkward as some of those Nick has shared with some of Harry’s others friends. Louis was totally comfortable around Nick and made a thousand innuendos in their short conversation and he got Nick to laugh until there was moisture around his eyes and his stomach hurt from it all.

 

Throughout the five years they dated, Louis matured. He quieted a little but he was still loud and funny and sarcastic. He could still get milk to come out Nick’s nose in the middle of dinner and he could still make him laugh until there was a very real threat of pissing himself. But closer to the end, something shifted in Louis and something changed, as though he made the complete transition from child to adult in a matter of days whereas Nick still hadn’t completed it even though he was three years older. Every night that they could, he cuddled close and tight, clinging to Nick in his sleep. He looked tired when Nick woke up in the morning, even though he was still asleep and still resting. Something had changed.

 

That something had continued changing and while Louis was still funny and sarcastic, he was not able to make Nick snort milk out his nose. So while things between them were less weird now that Nick had stopped going to stalker-like lengths to find out if Louis was smiling enough in a day, things were still a little weird. Neither of them really knew how to act around each other, never having been friends before, they didn’t know how to not cuddle when sitting on the couch. Nick didn’t know what to do with this suddenly sombre Louis and Louis didn’t know if he was still allowed to make innuendos around Nick.

 

Nick was just glad to have some Louis back in his life.

 

He was stretched out over the sofa, watching some really good programme that he’s been recording during the last few weeks so he could watch it when he got the chance. That chance had come this Saturday night, after a nice work week and he had taken it, curling up with a beer and some good TV. His phone was mostly ignored through the evening, too caught up in this programme to bother texting anyone and he had forgotten to reply to Harry’s invitation to go out for drinks.

 

Until his phone chimed and displayed Louis’s name, under a new contact name since Nick was worried that Harry would tell Louis his contact name was still what it was. Nick paused the recording, rubbing his eyes at the change in screens and reading to Louis’s message.

 

 _Talk to me please_ was all it said. Nick found it odd and he didn’t know whether it was sarcasm at Nick not texting Louis in a few days or something serious.

 

 _Yeah, I’m here. You okay?_ Most of their conversations were Nick asking Louis if he was okay.

 

 _Not really but ist not important. Tell me about your day or something_ Louis sends.

 

_Uh, well, I woke up and I showered like I always do on Saturday mornings and I may have wanked and I had some coffee and I fucked around on Twitter and watched this really good TV show._

_Sounds like a good day._

_Yeah it was. How was yours?_ Nick asks, beginning to worry again. Louis should’ve made some joke about him wanking and he’d added it in for Louis to laugh at.

 

 _Quite shit._ Louis replies.

 

_Tell me about it?_

 

He keeps his screen on for a few minutes, waiting for a reply, until he decides that Louis’s probably gone off to do something else and shuts the screen off. He rests it on his thigh while he presses play on his programme again, taking another sip of beer. He’s just beginning to get lost in it when his phone vibrates and he pauses it again, pulling himself out of the fictional universe and into the real one. He opens Louis’s message, reading it over.

 

_Can I tell you something? Please don’t be mad._

 

Nick doesn’t like the sound of that but agrees nonetheless with a simple, _Of course, love._

 

It takes another while for anything to come through and Nick continues watching TV and manages to finish his beer while he waits for Louis’s reply. When it does, it’s long and it takes a while for him to read.

 

_I lied to you and I’m an asshole and I’m really soryr first of all. But like, I couldn’t just stya with you and expose you to all of this and it fucking sucks and I miss you a lot and I’m sorry I wasn’t honest with you. It isn’t that I wanted to break up over you getting a new job and me being in school and us not seeing each other and that wasn’t it at all. Please don’t hate me but I have depresson and like, it’s been good the past few years, really good and of course ive had down days, everyone dpoes but then it all got really bad an I went to my doctor and he said I should take meds again and go to therapy and that means it’s really really bad and I don’t want you to have to deal with me when im depressed because im really shitty when im depressed. And I’m a complete asshole idiot and I want to be with you still but I don’t know if that’s just the loneliness or if I really do want yuo and im sorry and I hope you forgive me and I still love you._

 

It’s all heartbreaking, to be honest. Nick doesn’t even know how he gets through it with dry eyes but he does and he can’t breathe. His chest his wired shut and he can’t breathe and he just really wants Louis back and he doesn’t understand how. How could someone as bright and happy as Louis have depression? How could Nick have been with him for almost five years and not noticed a thing? He wishes Louis had told him sooner or that Louis had Harry with him tonight because Nick feels like crying and he wants to go out and rush over to his flat and cuddle with him but he doesn’t know if Louis would be okay with that.

 

He takes a deep breath, trying to come up with something the slightest bit eloquent or soothing to offer Louis.

 

_Lou, you’re forgiven already. I wish you would’ve told me that, though, because I wouldn’t have let you leave and I would’ve put up with you and helped you through it all until you were sick of me. If you ever need me, you can text me and I’ll always reply if I can. I’m here for you if you need me and I love you too._

 

Nick still feels like his blood is ice because he’s so shocked. Louis, his bubbly, bright, smiling Louis, has depression. That’s where the notes come from and the hospital bracelet.

 

It takes a minute, but Louis’s reply comes with a vibrate.

 

_Can you cme ovr? I ne ed a hg_

 

Nick really hopes those typos are from Louis being drunk or sleepy, not ones from crying.

 

_I’ll be there asap._

 

Louis sends a small thanks text and Nick is already halfway through changing out of his grubby sweatpants and unwashed band t shirt when it comes through. He gets into some jeans and a hoodie he remembers Louis loving and nearly runs over to Harry and Louis’s flat. He assumes since Harry is out, Louis is alone and he’s right. The front door is unlocked and Nick makes sure to relock it once he’s toed off his shoes.

 

“Lou?” He calls, unsure of where he is and if he should proceed further into the flat without invitation. He’s used to Harry’s apathy as to where he goes, just so long as he doesn’t walk in on anyone in the bedroom or bathroom, but he isn’t sure if Louis has the same policy.

 

“H-here,” Louis calls back, his voice soft and shaky.

 

Nick goes down the hall and into Louis’s room. The sticky notes have been taken down and he supposes that Harry actually listened to him and paid a visit to Louis’s room and got them taken down. Nick is glad, especially now that he knows Louis has depression. He looks at the bed, a big thing that’s been pushed up against the wall to provide more room for a small dresser and a bookshelf.

 

Louis is in the middle of the bed, curled up in the duvet and looking very, very small. His face is a little red from crying and his breathing is still uneven and he looks so sad and so glad to see someone that Nick’s heart is shattering into his stomach all over again. Wordlessly, he reaches for Nick and Nick complies, sitting down and wrapping his arms around Louis and letting out a sigh. It feels so, so good to hug him again after two months of abstaining from anything more than a poke or awkward side-hug. Louis melts into his grasp, his face tucking into the crevice between Nick’s shoulder and his neck, right where Louis used to position his lips to give lovebites and bruises.

 

It’s a little startling when Louis’s body begins shuddering with the shaky breathing that Nick knows to be from sobs. He pulls him in closer and tighter, kissing the hairs above Louis’s ear.

 

“It’s okay,” he whispers. “It’s okay, love, I’m here, I’ve got you. Shh, shh, it’s okay.”

 

Louis chokes out a sob against Nick’s chest and his heart wrenches. “I’m s-sorry.”

 

“Shh, baby, it’s okay, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

 

Louis just cries against him for a while longer while Nick holds him close and rubs his back, kisses his hair and does everything he knows how to do to make Louis feel better. He soothes him through it, murmuring encouragements and wiping his tears away and kisses his forehead. He doesn’t even care that Louis’s tears are staining his shirt and that this shirt (which he washed just the other day) will need another round through the wash machine; he just wants Louis to be okay and more than anything he wants Louis to stop crying.

 

When Louis’s sobs fade into little whimpering hiccups that hurt nearly as much as his tears themselves, he looks up at Nick, his eyes wide and pleading. “C-can I come home?” He asks, his voice soft.

 

Nick’s heart breaks a little more with the knowledge that Louis still thinks of their old flat as home. He doesn’t think of this room and this flat with Harry as home, but he thinks of the nicotine tainted flat with the yellowish walls and the sliding glass door that doesn’t quite work and the toilet that clogs too easily as home. He thinks of that as home. He still thinks of that as home even though it’s been two months since he came home to it.

 

He nods. “Yeah, love, of course you can.”

 

“F-for a few days?” Louis sounds nervous, shy and bashful like he’s never been before.

 

“Of course, Louis. Go and get a drink of water or something and I’ll pack up some clothes for you.”

 

Louis gives him a weak smile, hugging him tight and Nick has missed this so much. He’s missed the prominent dip of Louis’s waist that’s almost uncharacteristically deep for a man and he’s missed how he looks so stocky at first glance and so built out of muscle but upon touching him, he’s soft and he’s slight. He’s missed how he feels in his arms and the way he’s always warm and he’s missed the smell of his hair. An ache burns in his heart and he wishes he could hold Louis like this always and never let him go.

 

Once Louis lets him go and goes out into the kitchen to do as Nick said and drink some water, Nick finds his backpack underneath his bed which is curious since Louis takes it to class with him to tote his binders and books. He goes to the dresser, opening the drawer and fishing out a few t-shirts and sweaters he knows Louis likes. He grabs a pair of jeans and a pair of sweats before going to grab underwear. He pulls open the drawer and it rattles, sounding like there’s something much more solid than disused socks and clean underwear in the drawer. Nick frowns a little and grabs a handful of boxers, stuffing them into the backpack.

 

Something glinting catches his eye when he grabs a bundle of socks just in case. Nick’s worry deepens and he looks closer, moving around the socks to catch a glimpse of whatever it was that was silver. He shoves aside the socks and it reveals a small pile of silver razors.

 

Nick’s mouth goes dry and he doesn’t know why for an entire minute but his brain can register that this is something bad, something very, _very_ bad. When the image of Louis wearing a hospital bracelet and a bandage comes to mind, he feels sick and he worries that he’ll vomit all over Louis’s socks and underwear. He forces himself to take a deep breath and wills the urge to smoke away. Louis is here and Louis is counting on him. Nick takes another deep breath, shutting the drawer and zipping up the backpack before making his way out of the bedroom on shaky legs.

 

Louis greets him with a small bag with his toothbrush, toothpaste and deodorant in it. Nick would remind him that he still keeps Louis’s favourite brand of toothpaste and he left half a stick of his preferred deodorant in the cupboard at his flat if his mouth were currently working. Instead, he opens the backpack again and lets Louis stuff it in along with all the clothes, unsure how to bring it up to Louis that he saw the razors and he’s here, he cares.

 

They begin the walk in silence and Nick carries Louis’s backpack and he doesn’t think about holding his hand for the first minute and a half, he really doesn’t. Nick decides to break the silence with his discovery, hoping Louis doesn’t react badly.

 

“So, I saw something in your drawers,” Nick says softly.

 

“Wasn’t my dildo was it?” Louis teases a little and it’s so normal, so comforting that Nick thinks this could all be normal.

 

Nick chuckles and shakes his head. “Razors, Lou,” he says, looking at him.

 

Louis blanches, his smile disappearing completely. “They’re nothing.”

 

“Louis, you had a bandage on your wrist. You have depression. It’s something.”

 

Louis shakes his head, walking a little faster and Nick hates himself for scaring him off.

 

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be insensitive or anything but I just want you to be okay, Louis.”

 

Louis pauses for a few steps, looking back at Nick and taking his hand when they’re in step again. Nick loves it, revels in it because this could be the last time he ever gets to hold Louis’s hand in the wintertime and he knows it. He knows that Louis could easily find someone else and part of him hopes that he will so that Nick doesn’t feel bad about being the third person Louis’s ever dated. He keeps their fingers entwined for the duration of the walk home and squeezes his hand before he has to let go to fumble with the key to his flat.

 

When they get inside, Nick lets himself be dragged down the hall to the bedroom, not even giving him time to relock the front door. He drops the backpack on the floor of the bedroom and lies down with Louis, letting him pull the cover up over them and tuck himself into his chest, laying his head over his ribs and shutting his eyes. They curl together so nicely and so familiarly that Nick feels like order has been restored in the world and his loneliness and constant need for a cigarette have all vanished as Louis’s body warmth bleed into him.

 

“You figured it out?” Louis murmurs.

 

Nick takes a moment to remember what exactly he would have figured out. “I think I did,” he says quietly. There was no other alternative; Louis was hurting himself and the knowledge of it makes Nick want to hold Louis and never let him go.

 

“I’m not gunna stop,” Louis spat, “and none of those stupid ‘projects’ will make me stop and neither will a list of things to do when I feel like cutting.”

 

And there it is, the actual confession of what he does and Nick need not guess at it anymore and only be ninety percent sure he got it right. He nods, pressing a kiss to Louis’s forehead. “I’m here if you need me and I’ll listen to anything.”

 

“Okay,” he whispers, deflating. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

 

Nick rubs his back gently, his arms snaked around his body and holding him close. This feels just like everything before they broke up and it feels so right, so familiar, that Nick has to remind himself that this is temporary and Louis will be leaving in a few days. He wants to bargain for Louis to stay longer and he doesn’t want to let him leave this flat and he wishes he had it in him to bargain for more time but he really doesn’t want to sound pathetic.

 

He’s torn in two and he can’t choose between either side of it. On one hand, he wants Louis to stay so he can make sure that he’s okay and that he’s not too stressed about his studies and that he smiles and laughs every day. He wants Louis’s scent to bleed back into the flat and he wants to wake up to Louis being a dead lump on his arms and he wants to live with another person again. But on the other hand, he knows that Louis has been doing fine with Harry and that he’s probably doing much better with him than he ever would with Nick. He wants Louis to go home now so that he doesn’t get too attached and isn’t too used to him being around anymore.

 

Louis is currently a withering plant and Nick worries he’ll be the weed that chokes him.

 

“Lou, you said your depression came back. You’ve had it before?” Nick asks quietly, not wanting to break the tranquil and calm atmosphere.

 

“Yeah,” Louis murmurs. “Diagnosed when I was fifteen. It got a lot better right before I met you and it’s been really manageable for the past couple years. There were like, days it was hard but they never got really bad like when I was younger.”

 

Nick brushes a hand through his soft hair, always curious as to how he got it to stay that way. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

“It never really came up, I guess. And there were a few times I thought about telling you but I didn’t want you to think I was weak or anything.”

 

Nick sighs, his fingertips massaging gently into his scalp. “I’d never think that.”

 

Louis hums at the sensation. “Yeah, well,” his sentence trails off.

 

“Did you… cut before? Why didn’t I see scars?”

 

“I used a fuckload of Bio Oil and I tanned a lot and it hid them. I could still see them, I can always see them, but I don’t know if it’s some kind of optical illusion because I know they’re there and I’m just kind of imagining them or if they’ve actually always been there.”

 

Something heavy settles into Nick’s stomach and he wishes he hadn’t asked. He’d spent so much of his time studying Louis’s body and his skin and how easily different parts of him bruised and he’d never noticed the possibility of scars on his arms. He thinks they’d be easy to find, what with the contrast of Louis’s tan and how scars are usually white, but Nick never saw them, never thought to look for them. Through all the mornings where he dedicated an hour to pressing his lips to every square centimetre of Louis’s skin, he never discovered the crisscrossing lines that hid among the moles and the birthmarks.

 

Louis leans up and presses a quick kiss to Nick’s cheek. “I should’ve told you.”

 

Nick can’t think of an acceptable response and ends up just shaking his head and kissing his forehead again. They’re being so tactile and tiptoeing around each other’s lips even though Nick wants so badly to kiss him there.

 

It’s around then that Nick realizes what a big part of Louis he’s missed out on. Obviously his depression isn’t something all-encompassing that blots out all the other parts of him and it isn’t his defining factor, just like his giggle when he’s flirting isn’t and the way his eyes flutter open after he’s been thoroughly snogged isn’t. But it’s still a huge part of him, a huge struggle for him that Nick couldn’t even begin to imagine and he had no idea about it. He thought that the hardest part in Louis’s life was going through high school with no dad and a houseful of girls, not the constant struggle to wake up in the morning and get through the day.

 

Nick always knew that Louis wasn’t entirely composed of sarcasm, smiles and laughter but a part of him kind of hoped he was. And no part of him had even bothered to fathom the idea that his struggling and pain went deeper than he’d originally thought.

 

Eventually, Louis falls asleep cuddled into Nick’s side and Nick follows suit not long after.

 

 

The next three days are a bit of a blur. Nick almost forgot that Louis liked eggs on toast for breakfast with a side of tea with the slightest dollop of milk in it and no sugar since that spoils it. He almost forgot that his showers last upwards of a half hour even though all he really has to do is wash his body and his hair. Nick supposes that’s how his hair gets so soft and there’s probably some secret ritual he performs to get it that way.

 

Every single night, they fall asleep together after Louis asking in that quiet shy way if he can sleep with Nick again tonight. And every single night, Nick answers yes, of course he can with this burning craving to kiss him. Every morning, Nick wakes up to Louis curled up to him, looking peaceful for once and not looking troubled or tired. Every afternoon, Nick worries this will be the day that Louis pronounces himself cured and walks out the door to go back and live with Harry and they’ll go back to occasionally seeing each other when Nick comes to visit Harry and texts. Every minute of every day, Nick fights a craving to have a smoke and a craving to kiss Louis.

 

When Louis does leave on the third evening, it isn’t really that horrible because he looks up at Nick with a genuine, toothy smile and says “we should do this again”. The only horrible thing is transitioning back to living alone and not living with another person and not having another person to make tea for. He likes taking care of people, more specifically he likes taking care of Louis. When Louis leaves, it isn’t as bad as the first time he leaves because this time Nick is certain he’ll see him again and it won’t be something terrible like seeing him in a convenience store buying condoms.

 

The weekend after Louis returns to living with Harry, the curly haired boy shows up at his door with a case of beer and the reminder that the football game is on in an hour. Nick, unable to refuse him entrance because it’s been a while since it was just them and Harry brought beer, lets him in and they sit down on the sofa, both with a beer in hand. Some pre-game thing is on and Nick flips to the music channel, which is, as always, showing this week’s top thirty countdown. It’s on that new Avril Lavigne song with that guy from Nickelback she married but at least it’s better than talk of sports that neither Harry nor Nick understands.

 

“So Louis’s been doing better,” Harry says, attempting a conversational tone and reminding Nick he has absolutely no sense of subtlety.

 

“Has he? I’m glad,” Nick can’t help but smile a little as he wipes some of the condensation off the side of his beer.

 

“Yeah, like, loads better. He went to class yesterday and he hasn’t cut at all since he got back from being with you which means he hasn’t done it in like, a week and a half and that’s pretty brilliant.”

 

Nick smiles at that. Louis went to the classes he’s been skipping to avoid stress and work on bettering his mental health before he worried about his grades and his education. Louis hasn’t cut in a week and a half. “That’s really good.”

 

“I know, right? Like, he was kind of an idiot breaking up with you so early on into it since you’ve really helped him.”

 

He shrugs, running a hand through his hair to push it off his forehead. “It’s his choice and he thought it was best. This is probably working a lot better for him than living with me all the time and having to put up with me.”

 

Harry rolls his eyes, taking a sip of his beer. “You two are both loads happier when you’re with each other. I don’t get why you’re convincing yourselves that you’re better off with this.”

 

“Well, I don’t want to add the stress of a relationship onto his current stress and he knows that we wouldn’t see each other that often if we were together. So this is kind of working better.”

 

“I still say you two are idiots.”

 

Nick scoffs a little at that and flips back to the game, just to check if it’s on yet. When he sees it isn’t, he goes back to the music channel and watches it fade into that Lorde song he’s recently gotten obsessed with. He downloaded the entire album after only listening to this one song and he would say he’s kind of in love. Their conversation changes to talking about their musical tastes and Nick really likes Harry’s taste in music, likes that they like the same things and that whenever one of them is picking music for something, the other rarely disagrees. The only dispute they’ve had over music was Harry’s thoughts on the new Katy Perry album. Harry agreed that it had its merits but it wasn’t a very good album while Nick just about bathed in it for a month after it was released.

 

They half-watch the football game because they’re talking too much to really be watching it and Nick doesn’t mind a whole lot. He likes football but not enough to actively watch it without talking overtop of it. They discuss their favourite albums and Harry questions Nick on what he thinks of iOS7, which he really likes because the layout is so much brighter and just a lot cleaner from the old one. They order pizza halfway through the game and finish most of it before Nick bags the last two pieces and stuffs them in the fridge amongst the other leftovers and fresh ingredients.

 

When Nick returns from a smoke, the game is mostly over and Harry is transitioning from mostly sober to a little buzzed and he’s drunk quite a bit more than Nick. So Nick indulges him and lets him cuddle into his chest and it’s really quite nice because Harry is all warm limbs and he’s pretty much a heavy and warm and moving duvet over Nick. That is, until his phone rings. Knowing Nick doesn’t care about football enough to mind if Harry has a conversation right there in front of him, he pulls his phone out of his pocket and answers it. Nick really doesn’t care and he just hopes whatever it is doesn’t ruin this warm atmosphere that he’s been lulled into.

 

“Yeah, hey Lou, what’s up?” Harry asks and Nick is quite sure he’s on his way to drunk.

 

Nick looks up at him, watching the way his eyebrows crease together. Nick can’t hear anything from the other end but he doesn’t like the shift in Harry’s expression.

 

“Yeah, shit, I’ll be there soon, fuck,” Harry says, his words getting a lot more rushed and some of the drunken glaze over his eyes disappearing as he scrambles off of Nick and into a standing position. Moments later, he’s hanging up and stuffing his phone back into his pocket as he rushes towards the door to retrieve his coat and shoes.

 

“I have to go,” is all Harry offers as he struggles his way into his coat and fumbles for his keys.

 

“You’re not driving like this, mate,” Nick says, standing as well and plucking the keys out of Harry’s hands.

 

Harry gives him a desperate look. “You have to let me go, please, Louis is in trouble.”

 

Nick doesn’t like that at all. He doesn’t like it one bit and he just nods, quickly sliding his feet into the easiest pair of shoes they’ll fit in and goes out the door and down into the parking garage with Harry, completely forgetting to shut the telly off or clear up the beer cans or the pizza box on the counter. His only thought is Louis and he worries Louis is bleeding out all alone in his bedroom, having accidentally cut too deep and now he’s all alone and he might be dying.

 

The drive there is fast and Harry instructs Nick to stay idling in the car outside the apartment complex that Harry lives in while he rushes inside to retrieve Louis. The wait is what’s intensely long and horrifying and Nick hates all of it. He taps his fingers against the steering wheel and contemplates lighting up a fag to lessen his worry and help pass the time but remembers how much Louis would hate that, even if he was mostly paper white and half dead by the time he got outside. He waits in worry for a total of seven minutes until Harry comes back out to the car, leading along Louis who has a towel wrapped around his forearm and is holding it close to his chest like a wounded animal.

 

Harry loads Louis into the back and sits next to him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders as Louis sniffles and hiccups. Nick thinks that it’s wrong he’s driving and not sitting in the back to console Louis and tell him he’s okay, he’s gunna be okay, even if he isn’t sure of his words. He wishes that he’d drunk more than Harry so he could be back there with him, especially if Louis has been doing better after spending all that time with him.

 

“Go to the hospital,” Harry says, going through the words quickly. “He needs stitches.”

 

Nick begins driving and he chances a look back at them through his mirror every now and then. Louis has his face pressed into Harry’s shoulder, wearing a grimace that tells Nick he’s in a plenitude of pain and Harry is murmuring encouragement, telling him to put a little more pressure on his wrist. Nick drives since it’s all he can do to help Louis right now and he doesn’t want to intrude upon this moment between the two best friends.

 

The hospital doesn’t take too long since Louis’s risk of bleeding out takes precedence over the crying little boy in the waiting room with what looks like a broken finger. Nick waits with Harry in the waiting room while Louis is fixed up and they’re both deathly silent. The small telly in the upper corner of the room is playing the last fifteen minutes of the football game and the little boy’s dad is watching intently. Nick watches just so he doesn’t have to think about what Louis has done (even though he does that anyway).

 

Nick doesn’t want to think of the process in which it comes up, the urge to cut. Is it similar to that of the urge to smoke? He doesn’t want to think of how long Louis tries to dissuade himself from it before he breaks. Does he last longer than Nick does when he wants a fag? He doesn’t want to think about what causes him to do it, doesn’t want to think about the way he looks when he does it. Does he hiss as he makes the cuts in his skin or does he wince or does he simply watch his skin get torn into two and the blood come and try to stitch his skin back together? Nick doesn’t know and he hopes he never does.

 

It dawns on him then that Louis is still falling. He isn’t going on a steady incline after spending a few days holed up in a flat with Nick and cuddling for about twenty hours out of a possible twenty four. His mental health isn’t improving dramatically because he and Nick are growing closer again and they’ve finally admitted that they aren’t over each other and they want each other. Louis is still falling, falling, falling into some deep, dark abyss. Nick just wishes he wasn’t like the firemen in those old cartoons, rushing one way and another with a trampoline to break someone’s fall. He wishes he could catch him.

 

It isn’t long until Louis is walking back out to the waiting room, his arms folded over his chest and he’s still nursing his left arm where there are bandages and another wristband over his wrist. His shoulders are hunched and he looks like he’s trying to hide from Harry and Nick’s gazes, trying to fold in on himself until he disappears from view completely. Nick stands before Harry has a chance and he opens his arms for Louis, praying and begging that the boy will come into them for a cuddle so that he can remind himself that Louis really is still here.

 

Louis obliges Nick’s unspoken request and shuffles forward until he’s resting his head on Nick’s shoulder and lets his arms wrap around him. He doesn’t unravel his own arms to reciprocate the hug but Nick doesn’t mind. He doesn’t want to feel the weight of the bandage anyway. He just kisses Louis’s head, holds him close and loses himself in the reminder that Louis is alive and Louis is here.

 

“Why didn’t you text me?” Nick whispers into his hair, still soft as ever.

 

“Didn’t want to bother you,” Louis replies, his voice dripping with guilt.

 

“Hey, I’m not mad at you for not texting or calling or anything. I’m glad you did after you did it and I didn’t have to get a call from Harry when he got home. You went a long time without doing it and I’m proud of you for it.”

 

Louis shakes his head, burying his face in Nick’s shoulder and he kisses his head again.

 

“Let’s get you home, yeah?” Nick murmurs, rubbing his back gently.

 

Harry rises from his chair, pulling Louis from Nick’s grasp and hugging him. It lasts for a little while until they pull apart and begin walking back out to the parking lot, their shoulders bumping as they walked. If Nick didn’t know any better, he’d swear they were dating. He just goes around to Louis’s other side and rests a hand on his back, guiding him in a way he knows he loves.

 

Once they’re back in the car, with Louis sitting shotgun and Harry sat in the back since he’s still a little drunk and loopy, Nick doesn’t bother turning the radio back on when Louis shuts it off. He doesn’t like that gesture very much because he knew Louis to love music and love listening to it on the way home. Anytime a song came on that he liked he’d even sing along in that perfect voice of his. Louis wasn’t one to drive with no radio.

 

“Where are you staying tonight?” Harry asks from the back.

 

Louis shrugs.

 

“Do you want to stay with Nick?” Harry prods, trying to get something out of him.

 

Louis nods after a second, shutting his eyes as he does it. Everything about him looks so tired, so much that even though Nick can’t see him straight on, it’s painfully obvious.

 

Nick drops Harry off at his flat after a while and bids him goodnight. Then he drives in silence back to his flat and helps Louis get out and get inside, knowing that Louis liked guidance when he was sad and tired. He guides him to stripping down to his boxers, coaxes each layer of clothing off of him and gets him everything he asks for even if it means leaving him alone for a minute or two, which isn’t something he’s keen on doing. Nick doesn’t know how desperate Louis is for release but he knows there are a lot of things in his room that could be possible methods of suicide and he doesn’t even know if Louis is that far gone but he doesn’t want to risk leaving him on his own for extended periods of time.

 

They hardly speak a word to each other through all of it. Louis doesn’t ask if he can sleep with Nick tonight, he just does. He doesn’t resist, he doesn’t request. He simply _does_ and it scares the shit out of Nick.

 

Louis looks so exhausted when they finally get laid down together and Nick wishes he could sleep until his depression cured itself and he could wake up and be the bouncy, laughing seventeen year old Louis again. He doesn’t fall asleep immediately, though, and instead just cuddles up into Nick’s side. He doesn’t even cry and Nick hasn’t seen him cry all night. He can’t recall even seeing tears on his cheeks when Harry brought him down from their flat and he wonders if this is rock bottom or if this is only the beginning of the worst (or the end).

 

“I love you,” Nick whispers, kissing his forehead.

 

Louis nods, his eyes shutting.

 

“And you’re so beautiful, Louis, so breathtaking and you have been ever since the day we met. You’re so brilliant too and you’re in a wonderful university and you have a way better GPA than I ever had and you’re so witty. And you’re strong too, so fucking strong for fighting this and waking up every morning even though you might not want to,” Nick elaborates, watching Louis’s face remain stony. “I’m so proud of you.”

 

When his eyes open, his face has shifted a little in the wrong direction and Nick doesn’t want him to start crying now. His eyes are filled with tears and he buries his face in Nick’s shoulder, sparing him from having to see his tears. Nick holds him as he shakes with gasping breaths and choked out little sobs and it’s the most painful collection of sounds he’s ever heard come from the boy, even worse than the time he found out his nan had died and he wasn’t even told the day it happened. It’s all Nick can really do these days, hold Louis and try to hold him so tight that all his pieces stick back together and he no longer falls.

 

Louis eventually falls asleep and Nick stays awake, just studying Louis’s face to see if he looks more relaxed in sleep than he does in consciousness. The answer is no. His eyebrows are pulled together, creating a few little lines on his forehead and between his brows. His lips are pouted and he’s kind of got this scowl on his face that Nick wishes he could kiss away until it turned into that peaceful, blissed out smile he wears after he’s come down from a particularly good orgasm. Nick can almost see where he’ll develop wrinkles one day and it hits him that maybe he won’t.

 

Nick got Louis to cry tonight and he thinks Louis needed it but he doesn’t know if a cuddle and a good cry will work if it gets worse. If it gets worse, he definitely won’t be able to catch him and he definitely won’t be able to pull him out or help him or anything. He hopes that it stays around this bad and starts getting better but he doesn’t know if it will. He doesn’t know if Louis will ever recover from a crippling case of depression which has put his aspirations on hold and any romantic endeavors are set aside to make room for the constant need to recover.

 

Nick can only hold him, tell him beautiful words and remind him that he’s loved. He cannot save him. With that knowledge in mind, he whispers a thousand I love you’s into Louis’s ear, presses a million gentle kisses to his face where he knows he won’t be bothered too much and clutches at him tighter.  

 

 

In previous years, Louis’s birthday parties have been huge. Everyone they’ve ever spoken to stuffs themselves into either Nick or Harry’s flat, depending on the cleanliness of them, and gets drunk off their mind and eats cake. They always take days to recover from and a few weeks to stop finding things in places they don’t belong; they’re huge celebrations and everyone looks forward to them when November fades into December.

 

This year, a birthday party seems inappropriate when Louis is struggling to live. So the huge party is set aside and a smaller, more intimate party takes place at Harry’s flat. It still feels awkward to celebrate a person who wants to end their life but it’s much, much better than letting him be unsupervised in a house full of alcohol and razorblades. The birthday party is simply a small get together with an attempt at good food; Harry makes a roast and Niall attempts mashed potatoes. Liam makes something that’s supposed to resemble a cake and Nick makes vegetables while Zayn decorates the flat up a little.

 

The party is, to say the least, awkward. Louis is quiet, as he always is a few days after he’s cut, and he curls away into the arm of the sofa for most of the night. He tucks his freshly bandaged arm behind his legs and sips his drink through the night, hardly talking as much as he used to. He used to be so loud and boisterous at his birthday parties, the absolute life of them hyped up on alcohol, but this time he’s quiet and he’s reserved and Nick doesn’t really know what to about it. All he knows how to do is cuddle him but what with the fact that his bony knees are creating a wall between them, he can’t easily do it without making a verbal inquiry and he doesn’t really want to do that while all of Louis’s friends are around.

 

Louis does look like he enjoys himself through the night and he does crack smiles and he does laugh but the smiles never touch his eyes and the laughs are never sincere. The party is quiet and intimate and it’s really just the six of them sitting around chatting and force-feeding Louis cake and singing happy birthday and giving him presents. It’s all a little awkward because all of them know that Louis doesn’t want to be alive and here they are celebrating his life.

 

Christmas isn’t much better but there are more people and more alcohol and Nick gets drunk enough that he forgets the man he loves hurts so badly.

 

New Years is another opportunity to get drunk and Nick gets blindingly so, stumbling around looking for Louis and cussing when he can’t find him. In the morning when he’s vomiting up everything he’s eaten in the past month, he wishes he could remember if he had seen Louis last night. He wonders if the New Year will do him good like it does some people who are all about bettering themselves. He wonders if the New Year will make him want to destroy himself with a deeper intensity.

 

The last week of January, Louis stays with Nick again. He says that it’s so they can plan Harry’s birthday party together, which he’s vowing will be just like his old birthday parties with shitloads of booze and music and people and definitely will not be affected by his current mental state, no matter how much Harry is insisting he’d be fine with something just as low-key as his was. Nick doesn’t care about what his reason is for staying with him; he just likes waking up next to him and taking care of him and being able to supervise him all through the day instead of just getting a reminder he’s alive from his text and Harry’s updates on him.

 

The week between them is spent curled under blankets trying to keep warm with the shitty radiator in the corner and watching movies and hoping that the greyish slush will melt away and the world will go back to being rain and clouds. They cuddle every chance they have and Nick is so pleased when Louis goes to class every day he’s with Nick.

 

On the last day, Louis cuddles up so much that Nick has to wear a t shirt to prevent perspiration.

 

“I have to go,” Louis whispers as they’re cuddled together watching the end of the Baz Luhrmann version of Romeo and Juliet.

 

Nick makes a whiny noise in the back of his throat and tugs Louis closer. “Will you call me later?”

 

“Maybe,” Louis says softly. “If I’m not too busy fucking Harry.”

 

(Nick knows this is sarcasm and has to remind himself of that.)

 

“C’mon, stay one more night.”

 

“I can’t, Nick, I have to go tonight.”

 

Nick pouts and brings Louis even closer until their legs are perpendicular and Louis is sat on Nick’s lap. They stay like that for a while, just pressed close together and Louis is holding on tight like he never wants to let go, his face pressed into the crook of Nick’s neck. Eventually, he rises and packs his things up, returning seconds later and tossing it in the general direction of the door. He doesn’t follow it, instead sits back on Nick’s lap, wraps his arms around his neck and kisses him hard.

 

It’s not the first kiss Nick has had in the three months they’ve been broken up but it is the best. The others were performed with alcohol stained tongues but this one is completely sober and this one is with the only person who can make Nick’s entire body ignite from just a kiss. He doesn’t think he’s ever kissed with so much want, so much love and adoration, and he doesn’t think he’s felt it back. It’s the first time he’s kissed Louis in three months, the longest break they’ve ever taken from having sex, let alone kissing.

 

It doesn’t last very long but it feels like it lasts for a second and for infinity simultaneously. Once Louis has pulled away, he smiles and his eyes are all lit up and happy, happy, happy. Nick thinks, stupidly, ignorantly, that his kiss has cured Louis’s depression and that Louis is okay. Of course he isn’t, though, and he presses the most feather-light kiss to Nick’s lips again, igniting that fire and Nick craves more, wants to beg Louis to stay the night and wants to rock into him later tonight and kiss every scar on his skin and tell him he loves him more than anything else in the world.

 

“I have to go,” Louis whispers. “I love you.”

 

It’s the first time Louis has said it first and not just in reply to Nick saying it. “I love you too,” he says softly, avoiding asking him to spend the night out of fear of being pathetic as always.

 

Louis disentangles himself, standing up and going to the door. He gets his shoes and grabs his bag, giving Nick another sad smile before he opens the door and leaves.

 

Nick falls back on the couch, his hands coming up to cover his eyes as the cogs in his brain begin turning and he processes what just happened in his mind. He doesn’t even know why Louis left so abruptly and he doesn’t like the way his smile was so sad and he just wants him to be happy. He wishes that his kiss really had cured everything for Louis that he would be getting better from here on out.

 

He lights up a smoke to think to, trying desperately to think but he doesn’t know how to work through it. He doesn’t know how to decipher Louis or his actions anymore and he just wishes they’d never broke up in the first place so Louis would only retreat to Harry’s when they’d gotten in a fight. He wants Louis so bad, even if Louis is broken and bent out of shape and even if Louis’s first thought in the morning is _I don’t want to be here_. He wants him and he wants him to have stayed and he wants him to be here. He wants to hear his voice scolding him when he hears Nick fucking around with his lighter. He want, want, wants Louis.

 

Nick spends a few hours in silence, which is quite the feat for someone who enjoys the sound of his own voice and enjoys listening to music. He just thinks and he hopes that Louis is okay and he thinks about sending a text and then drafts one only to erase it seconds after he types it. Louis is probably with Harry and he’s probably fine and he probably just wants to be left alone if he left so abruptly.

 

Hours pass and Nick gets through dinner and a shower until he remembers that Louis hasn’t texted him since he left at one in the afternoon. It’s now seven and that’s one of the longest stretches they’ve gotten through without texting one another and Nick is worried. He worries his way through another cigarette and it dawns on him just how little he’s smoked in the past week, too caught up in keeping a smile on Louis’s face and taking care of him.

 

Harry shows up after Nick is done his cigarette, knocking on the door and rattling the handle, a sure sign that he left his keys somewhere since he has a key to Nick’s flat on his ring. Nick pulls himself to his feet with a groan and opens the door, sighing.

 

“Where’d you leave your keys this time?” He asks, rubbing his eyes.

 

“In the flat,” Harry sighs. “And Lou finally remembered to lock the door.”

 

“Do you wanna take my keys?”

 

Harry nods, rubbing his eyes and looking kind of exhausted.

 

“Hey, are you okay?”

 

“Yeah, I just woke up too early this morning and Lou’s been texting me,” (Nick breathes a sigh of relief), “saying that he’s really sorry about something and I don’t want to get home and it’s selfish as hell but I really don’t want to have to deal with it right now, you know?”

 

Nick nods in understanding. “Why don’t I come over with you?”

 

“Yeah, sure, I’ll make you some tea or something.”

 

Nick grabs his keys and stuffs his feet into his shoes and follows Harry downstairs and out the flat. They walk through the dark frigid air and it feels kind of odd. It doesn’t feel good, exactly, but it feels like something and Nick doesn’t know whether or not he likes the feeling. They shuffle through the slush and they arrive at Harry’s flat not long later, Nick pulling out his keys and finding the one marked with  a stripe of bright blue nail polish that Harry’s sister put on it when she was testing to find what the colour looked like.

 

When he pushes the door open, he finds that the flat is silent and it’s clean. This isn’t really out of the ordinary since Louis moved in because he likes trying to earn his keep with Harry by cleaning instead of just getting on his knees and sucking Nick off until he’s forgotten that he was mad about the flat being messy. It isn’t extraordinary that the flat is silent either, especially that it’s around nine and Louis goes to sleep early these days or maybe he’s getting a head start on his homework. It isn’t out of the ordinary, it isn’t.

 

Nick leaves his shoes on because he knows he isn’t here for long and he has no intention of staying longer than a half hour. Harry goes into the kitchen, starting the kettle and beginning to prepare for tea.

 

“Go check on Lou, yeah? It sounds like he’s asleep but just give him a once-over and clear up anything on the floor or the sheets or whatever,” Harry calls.

 

Nick nods, deciding not to focus on the implications that Louis could be bloodied and broken. He goes down the hall, painfully reminded of the time they first saw each other after the breakup and he sees that Louis’s door is already a little bit ajar so he pushes it open to peek inside a little more. The light from the hall slips into the bedroom, illuminating the room and it’s definitely not what Nick wants to see.

 

Louis is sat on the floor right beside his bed, his back against the mattress and the frame with his head leaned and tipped against the bedside table. His eyes are half open, unfocussed and blurry and his mouth hangs a little, as though he’s trying to speak but he can’t quite get the words out. He looks stupid and fucked up and Nick feels queasy about it. His stomach lurches dangerously when he sees there are two bottles of pills beside him, a few of them spilling out onto the carpet, and a bottle of Vodka empty beside him.

 

Louis’s dopey eyes look up at him and he whimpers a little, his face contorting in pain and Nick can’t even focus on that; his only notice is the fact that Louis is moving and moving means he’s alive. He rushes over to him, stooping down to a kneel and cupping Louis’s face, desperately forcing to meet. Louis’s other hand, clammy and sticky, takes Nick’s and he forces a smile, a pained, tight smile.

 

“Shit, Louis, shit,” he whispers, squeezing his hand.

 

Louis whines again, obviously in a lot of pain from the combination of everything he’s taken.

 

“Harry!” Nick calls, praying that the kettle isn’t reaching a boil and starting to whistle and that Harry will be able to hear him.

 

“Nick,” Louis whispers and his voice sounds wrecked and tired and broken and Nick doesn’t like it, doesn’t like it at all.

 

“What’s it?” Harry asks, walking down the hall at a leisurely pace. Nick wants him to hurry up, hurry up.

 

“Call an ambulance.”

 

“What?” Harry pokes his head in and it takes him a second until his face drops and he scrambles for his cell phone.

 

Harry rushes out, presumably to give an address and speak with the person on the other end. Nick goes back to giving his full attention to Louis, kissing his forehead, his nose, his cheeks.

 

“Nick,” Louis whines again, his face screwing up in pain. “N-Nick I made a mistake.”

 

“Shh, Lou, calm down,” Nick soothes, praying that he can take his own advice. “We’re gunna fix it, okay? You’re gunna be okay, it’s okay.”

 

“It hurts.”

 

“Shh, shh, stop talking.”

 

Louis whines and Nick doesn’t know if that’s better or worse. He decides on better because this way he doesn’t have to think about what’s paining Louis and what hurts.

 

Harry pops back in, kneeling on Louis’s other side and brushing his fingers through his hair, his soft hair and kissing his forehead. “They’re on their way,” he murmurs to the room. “Louis, dammit, I love you.”

 

Nick can see that Harry is already getting emotional and there’s already moisture in his eyes. He wants to hit him, remind him that Louis is right here and he’s not dead yet and he’s still there and Harry being upset is probably making him worse.

 

It feels like forever that the three of them are on the floor, Louis whimpering in pain and threatening to vomit every other second and Nick just wishes he would so he would feel better but he never does and the person Harry had spoken to had said to just keep him calm and wait until the paramedics arrive. When they do, Louis is taken away on a stretcher and he’s crying now, the tears slipping down into his ears and back onto the pillow.

 

That’s the last night.

 

 

Nick is all alone and his only company is the dark and a cigarette and his thoughts. It’s not completely dark because the streetlight outside his open window is echoing the thumping of his heart when it gets bad. The breeze drifts in through the window where the smoke from his cigarette flees to, the breeze catching it and pulling it away. There’s also the gentle and annoying glow from the stovetop, displaying the time and glaring at Nick like his mum used to when she knew he’d done something wrong and he was lying to her.

 

From beneath his window, Nick can hear the murmurs of Harry’s deep voice, sometimes listening to it go high from how hard it is to say this and to deliver this news. Nick chooses to focus on the white noise of the traffic and the sound of his voice instead of the tone or anything else. He listens more closely to the tapping of his foot and he tries not to focus on the heavy thump of his heart in his ears, the reminder that he’s anxious and something is very, very wrong. He wants to turn music on or talk to himself but he’s worried he’d end up screaming if he tried speaking and the music wouldn’t be good enough. There’s music for love and for hate, for sadness and for anger, but there’s none that Nick has found that’s very fitting for stress and anxiety.

 

It’s late and Nick has smoked his way through most of a pack, lighting one right after the other with shaky fingers and trying to force the nicotine to work. It isn’t. His stress and anxiety levels are too high for even nicotine to fix and he thinks that the only thing that could lull him into a stupor would be a hard drug with a higher chance of ruining his life.

 

It probably isn’t helping his mentality that the frigid air is coming in and chilling him right to the bone, making him shiver and making goosebumps come up on his skin. It’s probably hindering since he’s shaking a little from how cold it is. He should close the window but he wants to hear those beats of silence when Harry hangs up and comes back up to the flat. He should close the window but it’s filtering out the smoke and it’s saving the flat from stinking even worse than it already does.

 

Harry is doing what Nick is too weak, too cowardly to do, and he’s calling all of Louis’s loved ones, informing him that he’s in the hospital in London. He’s called three people so far and Louis wonders who they all are. Obviously his mum and his dad and Nick wonders whether Harry called his stepdad or if he started on Louis’s closest circle of friends. Zayn, Liam and Niall are among Louis’s best friends, the entire group of five having known each other since before high school, and they know about Louis’s afflictions, his struggles, and obviously they’re worried about their friend.

 

Nick doesn’t even know what to do with himself. Visiting hours at the hospital are closed to all non-family members and both Harry and Nick were refused entrance even when they plead about being stepbrothers or cousins of Louis’s. They promised they would call if something drastic happened to Louis and currently Nick has been watching his phone, dreading that it might ring and also hoping it does. He wants the drastic thing to be Louis being one hundred percent fine and not dead, not sick.

 

His thoughts have drifted to his final words to Louis, little reminders and encouragements that he’s okay, everything is okay. Louis’s final words to him were “it hurts”. There was no dramatic final confession of love and Nick doesn’t know if he regrets that or not. It takes unnecessary drama away from the situation and reassures Nick that he’ll be able to say it later but it also reminds him that if Louis dies, those were some really shitty final words to say to the love of his life. He’s currently working his way through another cigarette, the other one stubbed out in the ashtray, when Harry walks back in, looking exponentially more tired than he did earlier in the night.

 

“Jay is coming down tonight,” Harry says, collapsing into the chair across from Nick. “And the lads are gunna come visit him tomorrow.”

 

 _If there is a tomorrow_ , Nick thinks bitterly to himself as he exhales. “Sounds good,” he murmurs. He’s glad his voice isn’t quivering like half every other part of him.

 

He’s half afraid he’ll shake himself apart.

 

“Do you mind if I stay here tonight?” Harry asks, sounding so defeated and so exhausted and Nick would never make him walk home in this state. “I don’t want to go back there…”

 

“Will you sleep with me?”

 

Harry looks up at him, his brows knit together in that indignant confusion that shows Nick he’s pretty sure he misunderstood but if he didn’t, what the fuck? Nick sighs and rolls his eyes.

 

“I don’t mean sexually, you twat. I mean just cuddle up with me and stuff.”

 

Harry manages a small snort at that, his lips curving upwards for the first time since earlier tonight. It feels a little inappropriate, even the smallest snort of laughter, but it also feels kind of good. “I’ll meet you in there,” he says, standing up and heading down the hall to the bathroom.

 

Nick finishes his cigarette and empties the ashtray before he even thinks about going to bed. Harry crosses from the bathroom to the bedroom and Nick just shuts the window and spends some time sitting on the couch under Louis’s favourite blanket, grasping at straws to breathe in Louis’s scent again even though it’s ingrained into his memory for the rest of his life. He can still remember waking up in the morning and being able to smell Louis all around the flat right after he moved in. He can still remember the scent of him on his pillow before he moved in and he would spend the night curled up with Nick, who at the time only kept one pillow for himself.

 

He wishes that his flat didn’t stink of cigarettes and that it smelled more like Louis again, carried his scent in its walls and kept it there, refusing any other odour that might try to bleed its way in. He wishes Louis would come back just so the flat could be theirs again and not just Nick’s. He misses everything tangible and everything intangible about Louis; he misses his hair and he misses their fights. He misses their kisses and their sex and even the one time they got in a screaming row and it felt like the end. He wants all of it back.

 

Nick takes a shower before he goes into the bedroom, finding Harry is curled up on the bed and feeling like the weight of everything is pressing into him. He curls up with Harry like a puppy and tries to fall asleep. Sleep evades him until late into the night when it’s just starting to be on the cusp of morning and he thinks that it might be useless to even attempt it anymore. He finally does fall asleep, though, worried thoughts of Louis circling his mind.

 

The morning comes and Nick is too tired to immediately respond to it, his dream incorporating the ringing of Harry’s phone and trying desperately to keep him under and in his own mind when he starts being shook by Harry. He groans as his eyes open, the pale winter light coming into his room and half-blinding him. He hates it and he wants to be back hiding behind his eyelids and asleep. He doesn’t want to deal with anything and he’s just so tired.

 

Before he remembers about Louis and he’s up like a shot, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. “Is he okay?”

 

“Yeah, yeah, he’s fine. That was Jay calling saying that we can come visit anytime and he’s fine,” Harry says, his voice slower from fatigue.

 

Nick lets out his breath, nodding. “Okay,” he says. “Do you want breakfast?”

 

“Make toast while I shower?”

 

Nick nods again, getting up and watching Harry pad away to get into the shower. He gets dressed, disregarding his hair completely since it would take too much time and he has to see Louis since Louis is fine. Making toast takes as long as Harry’s shower and they’re both leaving within a half hour of waking up, going down to the parking garage.

 

The drive to the hospital isn’t very long but it’s very, very silent. Nick is forcing himself to focus on the road and not his thoughts about how this will be. How will Louis be, emotionally? Obviously no one expects him to be smiling until his cheeks are sore but Nick really hopes he isn’t crying. Will Jay treat him differently? He’s known her since he started dating Louis and she’s always loved him, praised him as being her favourite boyfriend of Louis’s but he wonders if that’s changed since they broke up and since Louis went back to destroying himself.

 

Nick and Harry both check in, Harry sending texts to each of the lads and reminding them they can come at any time. They’re told the room number and a nurse points them in the right direction and they start walking, Nick getting more and more nervous and craving a smoke with every step. He kind of wants to turn around and go outside and smoke away how nervous he is but Harry would slaughter him and he wants to see Louis, he has to see Louis.

 

When they walk in, Louis is asleep, Jay sat in the seat beside him and holding his hand. Nick gives Jay the tightest smile he’s ever given and looks over Louis, taking in everything.

 

His face is pale and he looks so, so exhausted, like he’s been carrying the weight of the world and has only just been allowed to let it down. His hair is flat, reverted back to the shiny and soft way it gets when there’s no product at all in it. Nick wants to curl up behind him, fit their bodies together like puzzle pieces and give him more warmth than the starchy sheets that reach up to his waist could ever do. He wants to play with his hair and make him smile and he isn’t sure whether he’s disappointed or relieved that he’s asleep.

 

“He’s been out for a while,” Jay whispers instead of a greeting. “He should wake up soon.”

 

Harry takes the other chair, trying to soundlessly fall into it and failing. It doesn’t rouse Louis but it makes Jay and Nick both glance over at him to check if he’s still asleep. He brings his phone out, probably sending out a warning to the other three that Louis is asleep. Nick sits beside Jay, dragging over the last chair from the corner and leaning his head on her shoulder.

 

“Have you spoken to him?” He asks, keeping his voice low in consideration of Louis.

 

“Yeah,” she says softly. “He’s not very good but he’s alive and that’s… that’s good.”

 

Nick can’t imagine how much this must hurt for her, watching the son she’s raised try so persistently to kill himself, to get a call at four in the morning with the news that the boy she’s put thousands of hours of effort into has swallowed two bottles of pills and a fifth of vodka. He guesses it hurts exponentially worse than his own pain and he feels like it’s almost inappropriate of him to hurt at all but he also hates that he feels he has to tone it down in order for Jay to have peace.

 

Jay is in the bathroom now, probably trying to cover the fact that she was jostled awake sometime after midnight and attempting to mask the fact she hadn’t showered or slept with as much deodorant, dry shampoo and makeup as she could grab in her haste. Since she’s temporarily abandoned her post of holding Louis’s hand, Nick has taken over and he can feel Louis’s heartbeat in his fingers. For the instant between each little pulse, Nick panics and craves a smoke with such intensity that it hurts. He anticipates the next one, worries endlessly it won’t come, and when it finally does he calms. It repeats cyclically and he just wishes he would stop worrying about it.

 

The hand in Nick’s folds up, squeezes his a little and his face twists up, his eyes and forehead wrinkling up. There’s a soft whine and Nick looks up, his constant awareness of Louis’s heartbeat disappears as he realizes his eyes are opening and his eyelashes are fluttering against his cheeks and he’s awake.

 

“Louis?” Nick asks in a quiet voice, trying not to disturb Harry, who had fallen asleep in his chair.

 

Louis whimpers again, his free hand coming up to cross over from the bottom of his ribs to the ridge of his hops and clutch his stomach. “It hurts,” he whines, his voice rough.

 

“Shh, it’s okay, Lou,” Nick whispers, standing up and pressing the button to call a nurse as he sits on the edge of the bed. He chooses not to think about how Louis’s words now are echoing the ones from before when Nick was convinced he was dying.

 

The nurse comes in, checks Louis over and explains that any stomach pain he might be feeling is completely normal and should wear off within the hour. Jay returns as well and rushes over to the bed, pressing a few kisses to Louis’s face. Nick is jealous; he wants to be able to kiss him and pet his hair and have some sort of physical contact that wouldn’t be awkward with Jay knowing they broke up.

 

“How long ‘m I here?” Louis asks, sounding like he’s going to cry.

 

“They said three days, baby,” Jay says, doing exactly what Nick wants to and running her hand over his soft, soft hair. “Will you come stay with me for a while when you’re released?”

 

Louis’s eyes widen, fill with tears and Nick’s heart breaks. “B-but I want to go home and I w-want to go back to school.”

 

“Baby, that’s a lot of stress on you. It’ll be better for you to come home for a while and only have to deal with your sisters until you’re ready to go back to school.”

 

Louis shakes his head, turning away from her and towards Nick, taking his hand again and squeezing. “I want to go home. I w-want to go home with N-Nick.”

 

“You have to get better,” Nick murmurs, leaning closer so he doesn’t have to speak as loud.

 

“But I want things to go back to normal!” Louis whimpers, his tears spilling over onto the bed.

 

“Louis, it’s okay, things will go back to normal and you can come home to me when you’re better. You’ll get better if you go with your mum.”

 

Louis lets out a sob, turning his face so it pressed into the pillow.

 

Jay reaches over and rubs his back as he cries into the pillow and Nick holds his hand, wishes he could fix this for Louis and wishes that he could do anything to ease the pain. He just wants to make him better, to find a cure for his depression and just make him happy and smiley again.

 

Louis cries for a while before he wipes his eyes and Nick feels like a kiss on the head wouldn’t be a bad idea. He reacts by entwining their fingers, squeezing his hand and taking a breath before he announces in a wobbly voice that he’ll stay with his mum but not for any longer than a month. Jay agrees that that’s reasonable and they slip back into silence, Nick sat beside Louis and holding his hand. Every now and then, the silence is punctured by another complaint of stomach pain and Nick really wishes they could give him some kind of painkiller for it.

 

Nick manages through the afternoon of tears and utterings of ‘I love you’ in varying stages of composure and somehow he stays awake until visitor hours start ending and the nurses begin warning him that he only has ten minutes, five minutes left until he has to leave Louis alone with Jay and the nurses. When they’re given the five minute warning, Jay curiously has to go to the bathroom and leaves them alone. (Nick is pretty sure she’s caught onto the fact they’re not exactly platonic and that they’ve been holding hands for hours straight now; for all he knows, she knows about everything. He really isn’t sure what Louis tells her.)

 

“I’ll be back first thing in the morning,” Nick promises.

 

“You don’t have to be,” Louis mumbles.

 

“I want to. I love you.”

 

Louis gives him the kind of fond and morose smile that screams skepticism and general disbelief. “I love you too.”

 

Nick brushes at his hair. “I’ll see what I can do about the flat not smelling like fags for when you get back, yeah?”

 

Louis cracks a little smile that makes his eyes crinkle and he nods.

 

“You’re sure you want to move right back in with me? You don’t want to live with Harry for a while?”

 

“I’m sure, Nick.”

 

“Harry will be around more often to take care of you and he’ll probably be be-“

 

“Shut up. I’m sure.”

 

Nick nods, kissing his cheek. “I’ll see you tomorrow then, love.”

 

“Bye,” Louis murmurs. “I love you.”

 

“I love you too,” Nick says softly, ruffling his hair as he stood and left.

 

 

The first month without seeing or hearing much from Louis is hard. Nick receives the odd phone call and text from him and Jay updates him every now and then, reminding him that Louis is alive and getting better. He ends up staying for an extra month, making the choice that he needed more time away from the stress of London. Somehow, Nick survives not hearing Louis’s voice on a regular basis and he learns to cherish any time he gets on the phone with him, makes sure to ask him lots of questions so he gets to hear him talk more.

 

The second month is mostly frustrating because Nick expected Louis home by now and he’s angry at himself for getting his hopes up. All the better, he learns, for the flat still smells like cigarettes and tears and it gives him more time to chase the smell away and make room for a more pleasant smell. He burns a few vanilla candles, knowing that Louis kept on about how much he loved the scented candles at Harry’s flat. He doesn’t smoke as much and he clears off their little balcony so he can smoke there.

 

When he gets the call from Louis telling him that he’ll be home tomorrow, he spends the entire day clearing up and planning Louis’s favourite dinner, anything that’ll make him happy. He does laundry and cleans everything until it’s just nice enough that Louis will be impressed, not having the effort after working all day and waking up early. He cleans the bathroom and makes sure that all of the things Louis left there when he moved in with Harry are still in the cupboard in case Louis needs them. All in all, Nick feels like a pregnant woman nesting before the arrival of her baby.

 

Louis arrives home and he looks a lot better than he had before he left. His cheeks have more colour and his permanent scowl has been replaced with a wide grin when he sees Nick. He smells like his shampoo and his favourite brand of soap when he bounds over to wrap Nick up in a hug and a loud kiss on the cheek. Nick wraps his arms around his waist, glad to feel that Louis’s hips had widened back closer to where they’d been before and his hair, his skin, his entire being was so much healthier.

 

“How’ve you been?” Nick asks as they load some of Louis’s things into the elevator.

 

“Oh, just awful,” Louis says in a sarcastic tone. “Mum can’t cook at all. Well, it’s not like you can either.”

 

Nick pokes his side. “Twat.”

 

Louis grins up at him, kissing his cheek.

 

“But really, how are you?”

 

“A lot better than I was,” Louis answers, giving him a proud smile as he pushes the button for the floor.

 

Nick curls his hand around his shoulders, pulling him closer and kissing his head. “I’m really glad, love,” he whispers against his hair.

 

Louis smiles at him, standing up on his tiptoes to plant a tiny kiss to his lips. “Does the flat smell better?”

 

“Loads better,” he says, smiling at their proximity.

 

They move Louis’s things, all of the things he took with him to Harry’s, back to Nick’s. It’s been over six months since they last lived together and the scars Louis had left in the flat were just beginning to fade. Nick can’t wait to have his presence back in the flat and make it seem whole again.

 

They decide to procrastinate unpacking Louis’s things in favour of eating dinner at a reasonable time and after that they decide it’s too much work and curl up to a movie together. It’s easing into spring and it’s getting a little too warm to cuddle up under a blanket but they do it anyway, disregarding the perspiration building on their skin. They shower together, which may or may not have included messy handjobs and some heating kissing against the shower wall while the water beat down Nick’s back, slowly transitioning from steamy to lukewarm. Once they’re dry and the come has been wiped off their fronts, they collapse into bed together, Louis reclaiming his side of the bed.

 

“I’m glad you’re home, Louis,” Nick whispers, his hands against the warm skin of Louis’s back. They’re both a little too warm under the thick duvet and it’s really just the corner thrown over them until they cool off from the shower.

 

“I’m glad I’m home, too,” Louis smiles, playing with Nick’s hair.

 

“You scared the fuck out of me,” he says softly. “Promise me you’ll talk to me if you feel like that again?”

 

“Promise,” Louis whispers, bringing one of his hands up with the pinkie extended. Nick folds his own pinky into Louis’s and smiles, kissing his head.

 

“I might not be able to like, giving you advice or anything but I’ll listen to anything, I promise. Even if I’m the one stressing you out.”

 

Louis cracks a smile with a chuckle. “You’re such a cliché.”

 

“I’m your cliché.”

 

Louis’s smile widens a little before Nick realizes what he’s said.

 

“Fuck, I mean, if you want that and if you’re ready for that because I understand if you aren’t and you wanna like, better your mental health or whatever,” Nick rambles, not even noticing the way his fingers are sliding over Louis’s forearms, over the countless scars, “that’s totally cool and I don’t mind at all, it’s your choice one hundred percent.”

 

Louis leans over, kissing him possibly to staunch the flow of words out of Nick’s mouth. Nick stills, his hands trace over Louis’s arms and trail across the dip in his waist to pull him close. “You’re an idiot and yes, you’re my idiot and my cliché and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

 

“I love you.”

 

“I love you too, idiot cliché.”


End file.
